1626
Peace with Spain--The making of the army and navy--The question of
Monsieur’s marriage--The first great conspiracy--Triumph of Richelieu
and death of Chalais.
The Duke of Buckingham had to do with a mind immeasurably superior to
his own; and if he, in the autumn of 1625, was pushing on a quarrel
with France, Cardinal de Richelieu’s game, for the present, was to
disappoint him. The English fleet, playing at piracy, carried off
French merchant ships: English influence led the Dutch to recall the
fleet they had lent to France; a serious annoyance to Richelieu, who
had not yet had time to make a navy. He had other reasons for being
angry with King Charles, who, from Henrietta’s first arrival in
England, had frankly shown his dislike of the “Monsers” she brought
with her and seemed ready to treat all his marriage promises, open
or secret, as waste paper. But Richelieu intended England to be the
powerful mediator between Louis XIII. and the Huguenots; to this end,
he ignored a whole series of pin-pricks, invited English ambassadors to
Paris, and let it be understood that France, once at peace internally,
would be ready to give active help in Germany.
That bleeding wound of civil war had so weakened the campaign in North
Italy as to make it ineffectual. An Austrian force, pouring down over
the Saint-Gothard, had reinforced Genoa, and Lesdiguières, with no
fleet to support him, had been obliged to retire. But the Spaniards
had failed to recover the Valtelline. It remained for the present
in the hands of the French; a difficult question to be settled with
the Pope, and Cardinal Barberini’s mission to that end resulted in
nothing but words. He went back to Rome, in high discontent, at the
end of September, and Richelieu, so far from slackening his hold,
sent the Maréchal de Bassompierre to reinforce the Marquis de Cœuvres
in Switzerland. It seemed that there was nothing to be done in the
Catholic interest with “le Roy du Roy,” the man people already called
atheist, Huguenot, “le Cardinal de la Rochelle.”
This was not quite the case, however. Though Richelieu would not treat
with Cardinal Barberini, he had already entrusted his other self,
Père Joseph, with powers for negotiating with Urban VIII. at Rome.
At the moment, the mission of Barberini made this impossible, but it
seems that the Capuchin--never publicly mentioned in State affairs,
but always to be found pulling the strings for Richelieu in the
background--passed on his instructions to the Comte du Fargis, French
ambassador at Madrid, who set to work on the hard task of framing
a treaty to please everybody--Spain, Austria, the Pope, the Grison
Leagues and France--but notably that secret party in France, headed
by the Queen-mother, M. de Marillac, afterwards Chancellor, and Père
de Bérulle, among whom Richelieu’s opponents were now to be found.
M. du Fargis, in his communications with the Spanish Minister, Count
Olivarez, considered rather the wishes of this French ultra-Catholic
party, reported to him by his brilliant and mischievous wife, now in
Paris, than the intentions of Richelieu. The consequence was, that
several attempts at a treaty were scornfully repudiated by the French
government, and it was not till May 1626 that any agreement was
arrived at. A nominal sovereignty over the Valtelline was restored to
the Grisons, and Spain renounced any right of passage. The Catholic
religion was established in the valley, and the forts were restored
to the Pope, to be demolished by his troops. All parties were fairly
satisfied, except the Duke of Savoy, whose quarrel with Genoa was
coolly set aside without any reference to him. And the English
government, which had almost forced the French Huguenots to accept
an unprofitable peace from Louis XIII. in February, saw with immense
irritation the conclusion of peace between France and Spain. This was
not the end they had worked for; and the secret diplomacy of Richelieu
was regarded in England as a dishonourable trick.
He cared not at all. Peace was necessary to him at this time: how
necessary, a glance at his home projects is enough to prove. He now
set to work upon them in earnest; backed up by public opinion, both in
1625 and 1626, in the shape of assemblies of the Notables--princes,
dukes, and peers of France, archbishops and bishops, crown officers,
presidents of courts of law, and the provost of the merchants of Paris.
At these assemblies the chief personages of the kingdom were invited to
advise the King. Richelieu took care that their advice should accord
with his own, for his day of absolute power was only dawning. He had
his way with them: as a body, they gave their consent to his policy at
home and abroad.
The creation of a navy was his most popular measure. No longer should
the King of France be forced to borrow ships where he could, to protect
French coasts and French merchant vessels against “pirates of all
nations.” Michel de Marillac, if he had secretly opposed Richelieu
in the affair of the Spanish treaty, was heartily with him here, and
he was one of those whose eloquence led the Notables to vote with
enthusiasm the building or purchase of forty-five battle-ships. The
sea-going trade of France, its enormous losses and dangers under the
present system, was the text which inspired Marillac.
“We have everything we need,” he cried, “to make us strong at sea. We
have wood and iron for ship-building, linen and flax for sails and
cordage; sailors in abundance, who will serve our neighbours if not
employed at home; the best ports in Europe ... and yet our neighbours
rob us of our fishing ... pirates ravage our coasts and carry off the
King’s subjects captive to Barbary.”
It was time, he said, that France should wake from her lethargy of many
years.
The words of Marillac on this occasion were the thoughts of Richelieu,
and he set about carrying them out in his own way. He had already taken
to himself supreme power over naval affairs, by buying out the Duc de
Montmorency and presenting himself with letters patent which conferred
the new office of Grand Master and Superintendent-General of Navigation
and Commerce.
Authority over the army--which he made almost entirely from small
and chaotic beginnings till it became the force that conquered at
Rocroy--was gained by Richelieu through the abolition of the old office
of Constable of France. The Duc de Lesdiguières, its last holder, died
in 1626, and military supremacy under the King passed into the hands of
a War Minister--that is to say, into those of Richelieu himself.
Equally difficult with the creation of army and navy were the necessary
reforms in the Church, in finance, in local government, and the
establishment throughout France of order and the royal authority. The
Cardinal shrank from nothing. Many of the details of his projected work
were never carried out, and it has been well said that he was a more
successful statesman abroad than at home, where a mass of privileges
and vested interests, with the growing necessity for heavy taxes, were
millstones hung round a financial reformer’s neck. Richelieu’s success
in crushing the great nobles brought no benefit to the common people;
it was all for the advantage of the King. Among his early dreams were
those of encouraging agriculture and manufactures after the example of
Henry IV. and Sully; but he did little good of this kind, except in
the way of colonisation. Under his protection new French commercial
companies, after a long struggle with England, gained a more secure
footing in Canada and the West Indies.
For the first few years of Richelieu’s ministry he was working against
tremendous odds. His health was terribly bad. All through the winter
of 1625-6 he suffered from fever and constant headaches, so that he
was often forced to leave Paris in the midst of his work and to fly
for rest and change to one of his country-houses. Once at least, when
summoned back on public affairs to the Petit-Luxembourg, he writes
to Claude Bouthillier: “I am so persecuted by my head ... my pain is
excessive.... I am so persecuted by my head, I know not what to say.
But even were I worse, I would rather die than not drag these important
affairs to a conclusion.”
At this very time, in the spring of 1626, the discontent he had already
caused in high quarters began to show its teeth, and the first of many
conspiracies was formed against him.
He had very few sincere friends except in his own family, and among
the men who worked with him, and whom he entirely trusted. Marie de
Médicis, indeed, had not yet actually broken with him; they were
apparently on the same terms as before. But in actual fact the
distance between them was widening every day. Influenced by Bérulle,
the Queen-mother had become more dévote; she disapproved of the long
delay in making peace with Rome and Spain, and of the treaty with the
Huguenots, helped on by the intervention of heretic England. She was
angry with England for other reasons: the presumption of Buckingham,
the treatment of the young Queen’s French household. All these things
were turning her mind against Richelieu’s policy. And he was not
very diplomatic with regard to his patroness. He showed too plainly
perhaps that her friendship was no longer of the highest importance
to him. He had gained what he wanted; he was the first man in France,
indispensable to the King. Ill, impatient, overworked, straining every
nerve to keep his hold on affairs and his influence with his royal
master, it was hardly strange that he should fail a little in grateful
attention to a stupid elderly woman, even though he owed her everything.
But Marie de Médicis was not responsible for this first great “storm,”
as the Cardinal calls it in his Memoirs. The clouds rolled up round
the King’s young brother, Monsieur, Duc d’Anjou, and were brought to
a head by Richelieu’s decision that he should marry Mademoiselle
de Montpensier, the only child of the last lord of Champigny and the
present possessor of his enormous wealth.
[Illustration: GASTON DE FRANCE, DUC D’ORLÉANS]
The plan of this match was nothing new. Henry IV. and Marie de Médicis
had betrothed the heiress to their son Nicolas, Duc d’Orléans, when
both were infants. After the boy’s early death it was proposed that
he should be replaced by his younger brother, Gaston, but there was
no formal contract. The Queen had never renounced the idea, specially
welcome to her because of her friendship with the girl’s mother, the
Duchesse de Montpensier, afterwards Duchesse de Guise, and of the
warm affection she had always felt for Mademoiselle de Montpensier
herself, who was now twenty-one, three years older than Gaston, and of
a singularly sweet character.
As to Monsieur, he has been described often enough. Handsome,
intelligent, weak, foolish, restless, impressionable, gay and
agreeable, false and cowardly, he inherited little of Henry IV. but
his vices and frivolities. He had been ill-trained by his governor,
Colonel--now Maréchal--d’Ornano, the Corsican officer who had won his
post by devotion to Luynes at the time of Concini’s death. Since those
days d’Ornano had owed some gratitude to Cardinal de Richelieu, and he
was now superintendent of his former pupil’s household. The Cardinal
had lately displeased him by refusing to admit him, with Monsieur, to
the royal Council; and disappointed personal ambition was the chief
cause of his throwing in his lot with those who were bent on making
Monsieur the head of an opposing party in the State. On the whole,
d’Ornano was probably more foolish than dangerous. Great ladies did
what they pleased with him; and he seems to have confided his dreams of
power, both for his young master and for himself, to no less a person
than Père Joseph, the actual ear of Richelieu.
But the centre of the cyclone was not in Monsieur’s own household: it
was in the heart of the young childless Queen. Long afterwards Anne of
Austria told Madame de Motteville that she had done all she could to
prevent Monsieur’s marriage with Mademoiselle de Montpensier, believing
that marriage to be entirely against her own interests. Already she
was neglected enough, unhappy enough. Louis XIII., if not the worst of
husbands, was sulky, suspicious, resentful. The Queen and her intimate
friends lived in an atmosphere of gloom, almost of persecution,
under the shadow of the King and his Minister. Louis hated Madame de
Chevreuse, and with some reason if it is true that her wild spirits had
led Anne into romping games which more than once cost France a Dauphin.
But it seemed to the Queen that Gaston’s proposed marriage made her
position hopeless. If he had children, heirs to the crown, his wife
would certainly be regarded as the first woman in France, and the
prospect filled Anne with jealous misery. Personally, of course, she
could do little in opposition, and the extent of her share in the great
conspiracy was much exaggerated by scandalous tongues and pens. But
Madame de Chevreuse threw herself into her mistress’s cause with all
the more energy because she hated both Richelieu and the King. The
Maréchal d’Ornano’s discontent found a hearty ally in her, loveliest
and most daring of _intrigantes_, and also in the Princesse de Condé,
who had her own reasons for disliking the Montpensier marriage. That
younger branch of the Bourbons would thus be exalted above the branch
of Bourbon-Condé, now next in succession to the crown. If Monsieur
must marry--a troublesome necessity--the Condés wished for a match
between him and their daughter Anne-Geneviève, now seven years old.
The delay would please the Queen; in the meantime the Prince de Condé
was ready to back Maréchal d’Ornano in demanding honours and appanages
for Monsieur and even a share in the government. The alternative to
the Condé marriage was one with a foreign princess; in either case
the young prince would be independent of his brother, his mother and
Cardinal de Richelieu. He was as popular, lively and good-natured as
the King was unsociable and forbidding; and under the circumstances
such a “cabale,” as Richelieu calls it, was likely to spread far.
The Cardinal saw his danger. The greater among the conspirators were
rather scornful of caution and secrecy. If Richelieu’s knowledge of
their objects was at first vague, hardly a rebel name escaped him.
From the Prince de Condé, still holding aloof from the Court, and the
young Comte de Soissons, who intended himself to marry Mademoiselle de
Montpensier, to César, Duc de Vendôme, governor of Brittany, who was
prepared to make his province the head-quarters of an insurrection, and
his brother Alexandre, the Grand Prior, with many others of less high
descent but yet among _les grands_--Richelieu knew them all. Behind
them loomed shadows of foreign Powers: the Dutch, indignant at the
coldness of their ally and at her treaty with Spain; the English, “from
faithlessness alone”; the Spaniards, from natural enmity and interested
ambition; the Duke of Savoy, to avenge his wounded pride; and then, of
course, the Huguenot party in France--past experience teaching them,
Richelieu says bitterly, that they always profited by the troubles of
the State.
The ends of the conspiracy revealed themselves with a certain slowness,
reaching the Cardinal through one spy and another. All through the
spring of 1626 the air was full of dark and threatening rumours.
Opposition to the Montpensier marriage was a mere starting-point.
Monsieur was little but the figure-head of a faction opposed to the
whole of Richelieu’s policy and bent on forcing his fall. The refusal
of Monsieur’s demands was to be the signal for open revolt, in which
the Huguenots would make common cause with the princes and half the
great nobles of the kingdom. The boldest conspirators talked of killing
the Cardinal, “the dragon who watched unceasingly over his master’s
safety”; of throwing the King into prison, and in case of his death
of marrying Monsieur to the Queen. It seems certain that Anne herself
was unjustly accused of being even aware of such desperate schemes as
these; but she was never quite cleared from the injurious suspicion.
Early in May, when the Court was at Fontainebleau, Richelieu decided to
strike; he had evidence enough to convince the King that his brother’s
attitude was dangerous. M. d’Ornano came to wait on His Majesty. Louis
received him graciously. The same night he was arrested, and the next
night found him a prisoner at the castle of Vincennes. His brothers and
intimate friends were thrown into the Bastille. “My husband is dead,”
said Madame d’Ornano when she heard of his capture; and the words were
spoken but a few months too soon.
Monsieur was furiously angry. He remonstrated loudly with the King, who
merely answered that he had acted on the advice of his Council. The
Prince then attacked M. d’Aligre, the Chancellor, a timid personage,
who humbly excused himself, declaring that he had given no advice of
the kind. Gaston went blustering to Richelieu, from whom he met with
a different reception and a different reply. The Cardinal not only
acknowledged that the King had asked his advice; he added that he
had given it strongly in favour of the arrest of M. d’Ornano, which
he considered absolutely necessary for the good of the State and of
Monsieur himself. Gaston replied with insulting language and flung away.
“The Cardinal hated Monsieur,” says a writer of the time, and we can
well believe it--with the scornful hatred of a proud and brilliant man
bearing the whole burden of the State on his shoulders, and finding
himself constantly thwarted and threatened by an insolent, privileged
boy. He hated him more because of the reconciliations he had to
arrange, the flatteries he had to use, the fatherly yet respectful
manner in which the King’s brother must be treated by the King’s First
Minister--conscious, for the next dozen years, that his sickly master
might die childless and be succeeded by this young fellow whose will
and power for mischief were only balanced by his weakness of character.
Until the birth of a Dauphin, in 1638, destroyed Gaston’s political
importance, he was to be the chief obstacle in Richelieu’s career, the
chief thorn in his side.
The arrest of the Maréchal d’Ornano had all the effect that Richelieu
intended; but if it warned and terrified the more prudent conspirators,
it infuriated the bolder, younger spirits of Monsieur’s faction. Madame
de Chevreuse and a few young men, led by the Grand Prieur de Vendôme
and Henry de Talleyrand-Périgord, Comte de Chalais, decided that
Richelieu must die. They planned that Monsieur should invite himself
and a party of his friends to dine with the Cardinal at Fleury, his
country-house near Fontainebleau. This gracious act might be supposed
to mean that the Prince forgave his friend’s arrest. But the real
intention was that the Cardinal’s guests should murder him. In the
confusion that would follow, Monsieur’s party meant to do as they
pleased with the King and the government.
Richelieu was saved by the weakness of one of the chief conspirators.
The Comte de Chalais, Keeper of the King’s Wardrobe, a young man
of twenty-eight, was at this time the favoured lover of Madame de
Chevreuse. He would have killed a dozen cardinals to please her, and he
was ready to stab her enemy with his own hand. For all that, he ruined
the enterprise. On the eve of the great day he confided the plan to
Commander de Valençay, a loyal courtier, though a friend of his own.
M. de Bassompierre may tell the story, for he was at Fontainebleau at
the time.
“The said Commander reproached him for his treachery, that being the
King’s servant he should dare to undertake this against his First
Minister; saying that he must give him warning, and that in case he
refused to do this he would do it himself: to which Chalais, being
intimidated, consented; and they both went in that same hour to Fleury,
in order to warn M. le Cardinal, who thanked them, and begged them to
go and inform the King of the same: which they did; and the King, at
eleven o’clock in the evening, sent to order thirty of his gendarmes
and thirty light horse to go immediately to Fleury. The Queen-mother
also dispatched thither the nobles of her household. It happened as
Chalais had said: towards three o’clock in the morning Monsieur’s
officers arrived at Fleury, sent to prepare his dinner. M. le Cardinal
left them in the house, came to Fontainebleau, and went straight to
the bed-chamber of Monsieur, who was getting up, and was sufficiently
amazed to see him. He reproached Monsieur for not having honoured him
with his commands to provide dinner, which he would have done as best
he could, and said that he had left the house in possession of his
people. After this, having handed Monsieur his shirt, he went away
to the King, and afterwards to the Queen-mother” ... leaving Gaston
effectually frightened by his terrible coolness.
So ended the Fleury plot. The friends of M. de Chalais were completely
puzzled as to how the information could have reached Richelieu, until,
the Court having returned to Paris, he made his confession to Madame de
Chevreuse, promising more faithfulness in future.
For a moment a kind of paralysis seems to have seized both parties in
the game. Ill in body and troubled in mind, realising that his public
life must be one long struggle against deadly foes at home and abroad,
Richelieu actually offered his resignation to the King. It was plain,
he said, that he alone was the cause of divisions in the State. His
enemies were so many that he lived at Court in continual peril of
assassination. If it were the King’s will that in spite of danger he
should continue to serve him, he was ready to do so, but he knew that
his departure would be for the peace of the realm. Writing also to the
Queen-mother, he begged her to take his part with the King, adding that
unless he could be more careful of his health in future his career as a
statesman would of necessity be short.
Such fits of depression were nothing new. It is likely enough that
Richelieu was in earnest, for the moment at least. But if his object
was to measure the confidence and loyalty he might expect from
his master through the difficult times he foresaw, the experiment
succeeded. In a long and kind letter, Louis refused to let his Minister
go.
“Mon Cousin,” he wrote, “... I have every confidence in you, and never
has any one served me as well as you.... I desire and beg you not to
retire, for my affairs would go ill.... I pray you to have no fear of
the calumnies which in my Court no one can escape.... Be assured that
I will protect you against every one, and that I will never abandon
you. The Queen, my mother, promises you as much.... Be assured that I
shall never change, and that, by whomsoever you may be attacked, you
will have me for your second.”
As to the Cardinal’s health, the King promised to spare him as much as
possible, to dispense him from all visits, and to give him frequent
rest and relaxation. Following on these favours, he ordered him for his
greater security a guard of a hundred men.
After the Fleury affair, Richelieu retired for some days to his house
at Limours. Here, at the end of May, he received two important visits.
One was from the Prince de Condé, tired of his isolation, alarmed by
the fate of d’Ornano, and convinced at length that the man at the head
of affairs would be safer as a friend than as an enemy. He was well
received, for Richelieu had already given Louis XIII. the counsel which
he now acted upon--the wise counsel given long ago by the Duke of Milan
to Louis XI.--that the princes leagued against the King should be
divided amongst themselves.
Monsieur le Prince slept at Limours, and remained the next day to
dinner. He talked--Condé always talked much and plausibly--and the
Cardinal, by his own account, listened respectfully and answered
frankly. They discussed the affairs of Monsieur. It was Condé’s opinion
that he should be kindly treated, but kept in his place: as to the
Maréchal d’Ornano, his arrest had been “a master-stroke” and should be
followed up by his trial. He recommended to the Cardinal more caution
in dealing with powerful men, but would not hear of his retirement from
the head of affairs. It would be the ruin of the State, he said. He
told him that he had long desired his friendship; that France had never
before seen so great or so disinterested a Minister, whose glorious
deeds could not be denied, even by his enemies. All this and much more
flattery ended in an alliance between the Prince and the Cardinal,
which actually lasted their lives. Condé became a loyal subject of the
King and a devoted adherent and admirer of Richelieu.
The other visit was from Monsieur himself. The consequences of this
interview were not so lasting, though for the moment satisfactory. The
royal boy was in a chastened frame of mind. He was ready to make his
formal submission to the King, without any condition, even as to the
safety of M. d’Ornano, who had thus a foretaste of the destiny of all
Monsieur’s friends. Richelieu’s fatherly admonitions had their full
effect. The next day, in Paris--Pentecost, May 31--the Prince vowed
on the Gospels eternal love and loyalty to the King and to the Queen
his mother. A solemn family compact was drawn up and signed: _Louis_,
_Marie_, _Gaston_.
The Cardinal’s next step was the disgrace of M. d’Aligre, the
Chancellor, who had failed to face Monsieur in the matter of d’Ornano’s
arrest. The seals were transferred to Michel de Marillac. Then the
Vendôme princes had their turn.
If the Duc de Vendôme--the “César-Monsieur” flattered and feared by
Henry IV.’s Court--had been a man of character to match his position,
no one of the great nobles could have equalled him in power and
popularity. Even as a vain and vicious coward, few men in the kingdom
were more dangerous to Richelieu’s plans and Louis XIII.’s government.
From his province of Brittany, the Duke had watched the failure of
the great conspiracy in which he and his brother were deeply engaged.
They feared, and with reason, that their own ruin would follow that
of the Maréchal d’Ornano. As the month of May passed, and nothing was
done, César proceeded to fortify himself at Nantes, while Alexandre, a
bolder man, watched events in Paris and sought, not without success, to
discover the real mind of his half-brother the King.
Early in June came the startling news that Louis and the Court were
setting out for Brittany. They were already on the road, and the
Cardinal, lingering a few days at Limours for his health’s sake, was
about to follow, when he was unexpectedly visited by Alexandre de
Vendôme, hurrying post-haste to fetch his brother from Nantes to meet
the displeased King.
From Richelieu’s own account, it was a characteristic interview. He
had long distrusted these two young men, whom Henry IV. had indulged
and exalted with the short-sighted idea that they would be Louis
XIII.’s most loyal subjects. On the contrary, says Richelieu, both
contributed to every effort that was made to shake the royal authority,
and both--had they been able--would have done the kingdom irreparable
harm. With grim satisfaction the Cardinal saw these royal birds now
struggling in the net he had spread for them. It was not necessary to
spare them as Gaston, legitimate prince and heir-presumptive, had been
spared.
Richelieu has been accused of deceiving the Grand Prior with false
hopes of favour and clemency, thus encouraging him to place his
brother and himself in the King’s hands. He might have thought himself
justified in doing so, if necessary. On the contrary, if he is to be
believed, he tried to guard against any accusation of the kind. He
pretended to be aware neither of the anxious terror that had brought
the young man to Limours, nor of the “fausse hardiesse” which led him
to play this game of bluff for himself and for his brother, acting
innocence and a frank readiness to face the King.
“When the Grand Prior told the Cardinal that he was going to fetch
his brother, he did not answer him that he was doing either well or
ill, because he saw that they could not save themselves, or resist the
King’s power, if they remained in Brittany, and he thought it better
that His Majesty should take the trouble to fetch them thence, or even
take them on their road, than give them a pretext to say” (what they
did say) “that they had been attracted by fine words, deceived and
caught by false hopes.”
Finding that the Cardinal would give him no clear lead, Alexandre de
Vendôme hastened on his way. A few days later, he and his brother,
“making a virtue of necessity,” met the King at Blois. The next
day, both were arrested and conveyed to the castle of Amboise,
from which they were transferred to Vincennes. The Duc de Vendôme’s
question--“What about Monsieur? Has he been arrested or no?”--was
hardly needed to warn Richelieu, who arrived at Blois that same
evening, that the conspiracy was still alive and dangerous.
The Comte de Chalais, unimaginably rash and foolish, was playing a game
he could only lose. His escape after the Fleury affair had been narrow
enough, and he had then solemnly promised loyalty to the Cardinal, even
undertaking to act as his spy, informing him of any evil counsels that
might reach Monsieur. But Chalais was not his own master. Madame de
Chevreuse drove him into a path where there was no more turning back,
and after the arrest of the Vendôme princes he became the active agent
and cat’s-paw of a new combination of old rebel forces which swiftly
dragged Monsieur into its centre, his vows of loyalty hardly spoken and
the ink of his signature not yet dry.
While the King continued his slow progress into Brittany to assure
himself of the loyalty of the province, he was actually enveloped in
a cloud of conspiracy. Every night, according to Bassompierre, the
Comte de Chalais visited Monsieur in his room, and for two or three
hours talked and plotted treason: an easy adventure for the Master of
the King’s Wardrobe, who had his lodging close to royalty. The plan
was that Monsieur should leave the Court and fly either south-west or
north-east; either to the Huguenots at La Rochelle, prepared to receive
him by the influence of Madame de Chevreuse and Madame de Rohan, or to
the Duc d’Épernon and his son at Metz. The Comte de Soissons, whom the
King had left behind as governor of Paris, furious at the arrest of his
friends the Vendôme princes, was eager not only to help with arms and
men towards a civil war, but to seize his own advantage by carrying off
Mademoiselle de Montpensier.
This last detail of the plot, it seems, was the first to reach the
King’s ears, and he defeated it by sending for the heiress and her
mother, the Duchesse de Guise, who immediately followed the Court on
its westward journey.
This piece of ill-luck was swiftly followed by others. Monsieur himself
was undecided, timid, difficult to move to instant action. Disliking
the Huguenot leaders, he was unwilling to place himself in their hands.
Metz was his favourite idea; but the Marquis de la Valette would not
act independently of his father, and the old Duc d’Épernon, it seems,
had had enough of quarrels with the King, for he went so far as to send
him the letter that Monsieur had written.
Richelieu seems to have felt a certain scornful pity for the
unfortunate Chalais, whose evil report was brought to him by other
spies. More than once he had him warned that he was on the road to
ruin; yet “the poor gentleman” went on with his desperate schemes. And
even the spies had not discovered the extent of these. Chalais was
betrayed to his destruction by a friend, the Comte de Louvigny, who
quarrelled with him because he would not take his side in some trivial
dispute with the Comte de Candale, another son of the Duc d’Épernon.
Chalais made it clear that neither he nor his friends could afford to
be on ill terms with that family.
This quarrel took place between Saumur and Nantes, as the Court
travelled down the Loire in all the fresh beauty of early summer. M. de
Bassompierre, who was present, a courtier of long experience, thought
nothing of it--a mere matter of an _amourette_--and it is pretty
certain that public opinion was with him in denouncing Louvigny as “ce
méchant garçon” for the revenge he took. Having been known as “parfait
ami de Chalais,” the confidant of his secrets, he straightway poured
them all into the ears of the Cardinal and the King. Bassompierre hints
that in his rage and spite he told even more than the truth; but that
alone was enough to condemn Chalais.
He was arrested at Nantes on July 8. On the 11th, the Estates of
Brittany were opened by the King amid loyal rejoicings, a new governor,
the Maréchal de Thémines, taking the place of the Duc de Vendôme. By
this appointment Richelieu showed a certain magnanimity; forgetting
his own brother’s death at the hands of the Maréchal’s son, he
remembered and rewarded the old soldier’s faithfulness in 1616, when by
the arrest of Condé he had checked the rebel party and lightened the
task of the Richelieu-Barbin ministry.
While Chalais lay in prison through those summer days, his fate, if
ever doubtful, was decided by the poltroonery of the prince for whom he
had conspired. To assure his own safety and to gain some of his ends,
if not all, Monsieur made a full confession to the Cardinal first,
then to the King in Council. In his long and confused declarations,
preserved in the French Archives, a few points stand out clearly: that
he described all his plans against the State, especially against the
Cardinal; treason, revolt, murder, and civil war: that he denounced
all his friends, not only d’Ornano and Chalais, but his Vendôme
half-brothers, the Comte de Soissons and many more. He did not quite
spare Madame de Chevreuse or even the Queen. On the other hand, he
once again promised obedience to the King and consented to marry
Mademoiselle de Montpensier; but the reward he asked for his submission
was not, as it might well have been, the pardon of his friends, but the
great appanage that he had long demanded. Richelieu found it politic to
satisfy him so far, and Gaston became Duke of Orléans and of Chartres
and Count of Blois; but his actual income, in the form of pensions,
still depended largely on the pleasure of the King.
“After which,” says Richelieu, “the marriage was made without further
difficulty on Monsieur’s side. The Cardinal married them on August 5,
in the Chapel of the Fathers of the Oratory at Nantes, in whose house
the Queen-mother was lodged.”
In the last days, when the formalities of the trial of Chalais were
already begun, Monsieur made some weak attempt to save him; but
the victim was marked for death. His own prayers, entreaties, and
despairing confessions, his mother’s agonised letter to the King,
the efforts of some of his friends--more courageous than Madame de
Chevreuse, who dared not even answer his last adoring letters--were all
of no avail. He was condemned to the frightful death of a traitor.
The King commuted its worst horrors. Chalais was beheaded at Nantes on
August 19. At the end he bore his fate like a soldier; and if his agony
was unusually long and terrible, the cause lay in the mistaken kindness
of his friends, who had managed to kidnap the public executioner. His
place was taken by a condemned wretch from the prison who thus earned
his own pardon. They say that at the twentieth blow from that unskilful
arm young Chalais still groaned--“Jésus Maria!” and a shudder of pity
ran through the staring crowd.